everything had turned to shit. They had done something to the money. He didn’t understand it; he’d been an office drone in the shipping department of Great Lakes Transport, and what he knew about was invoices and using a computer to route stuff by ship, train, and air.
“People will see me with a baby and think I’m irresponsible,” Janice Cray fretted. “I know it, I see it on their faces already, I saw it on yours. But what else could I do? Even if the girl down the street could stay all night, it would have cost eighty-four dollars. Eighty-four! I’ve got next month’s rent put aside, and after that, I’m skint.” She smiled, and in the light of the parking lot’s high arc-sodiums, Augie saw tears beading her eyelashes. “I’m babbling.”
“No need to apologize, if that’s what you’re doing.” The line had turned the first corner now, and had arrived back at where Augie was standing. And the girl was right. He saw lots of people staring at the sleeping kid in the Papoose.
“Oh, that’s it, all right. I’m a single unmarried mother with no job. I want to apologize to everyone, for everything.” She turned and looked at the banner posted above the rank of doors. 1000 JOBS GUARENTEED! it read. And below that: “We Stand With the People of Our City!” —MAYOR RALPH KINSLER.
“Sometimes I want to apologize for Columbine, and 9/11, and Barry Bonds taking steroids.” She uttered a semi-hysterical giggle. “Sometimes I even want to apologize for the space shuttle exploding, and when that happened I was still learning to walk.”
“Don’t worry,” Augie told her. “You’ll be okay.” It was just one of those things that you said.
“I wish it wasn’t so damp, that’s all. I’ve got her bundled up in case it was really cold, but this damp . . .” She shook her head. “We’ll make it, though, won’t we, Patti?” She gave Augie a hopeless little smile. “It just better not rain.”
• • •
It didn’t, but the dampness increased until they could see fine droplets suspended in the light thrown by the arc-sodiums. At some point Augie realized that Janice Cray was asleep on her feet. She was hipshot and slump-shouldered, with her hair hanging in dank wings around her face and her chin nearly on her breastbone. He looked at his watch and saw it was quarter to three.
Ten minutes later, Patti Cray awoke and started to cry. Her mother (her baby mama, Augie thought) gave a jerk, voiced a horselike snort, raised her head, and tried to pull the infant out of the Papoose. At first the kid wouldn’t come; her legs were stuck. Augie pitched in, holding the sides of the sling. As Patti emerged, now wailing, he could see drops of water sparkling all over her tiny pink jacket and matching hat.
“She’s hungry,” Janice said. “I can give her the breast, but she’s also wet. I can feel it right through her pants. God, I can’t change her in this—look how foggy it’s gotten!”
Augie wondered what comical deity had arranged for him to be the one in line behind her. He also wondered how in hell this woman was going to get through the rest of her life—all of it, not just the next eighteen years or so when she would be responsible for the kid. To come out on a night like this, with nothing but a bag of diapers! To be that goddam desperate!
He had put his sleeping bag down next to Patti’s diaper bag. Now he squatted, pulled the ties, unrolled it, and unzipped it. “Slide in there. Get warm and get her warm. Then I’ll hand in whatever doodads you need.”
She gazed at him, holding the squirming, crying baby. “Are you married, Augie?”
“Divorced.”
“Children?”
He shook his head.
“Why are you being so kind to us?”
“Because we’re here,” he said, and shrugged.
She looked at him a moment longer, deciding, then handed him the baby. Augie held her out at arms’ length, fascinated by the red, furious face, the bead of snot on the tiny upturned nose, the bicycling legs in the flannel onesie. Janice squirmed into the sleeping bag, then lifted her hands. “Give her to me, please.”
Augie did, and the woman burrowed deeper into the bag. Beside them, where the line had doubled back on itself for the first time, two young men were staring.
“Mind your business, guys,” Augie said, and they looked away.
“Would you give me a diaper?” Janice said. “I should change her before